[WikiEN-l] Response to Bryan Derken

[Bryan Derksen]

At 09:36 AM 6/6/2004 +0000, Abe Sokolov wrote:

>Bryan Derksen:
>
>Speaking of rudeness, aside from berating me on the mailing list due to 
>one single disagreement, you came out of nowhere on [[Talk:Origins of the 
>American Civil War]] dismissing the article division as "ugly" and 
>"fragile," proclaiming that you were going to "better organize" [the 
>article] while offering no specifics.

I "came out of nowhere" because I'd been randomly browsing around and had 
just come across it for the first time; the readership of pages on 
Wikipedia is not unchanging and new arrivals like that happen all the time. 
I offered no specifics because I hadn't worked them out yet when I first 
started posting on talk:. I was planning to work the specifics out 
_collaboratively_ because I didn't want to step on anyones' toes if I could 
help it. However, new arrival at that page or not, I have just as much 
right to edit that article as you do. I was simply trying to be polite by 
discussing it first.

>Furthermore, your desire to "create better page titles" made no sense at 
>all. You failed to understand that these weren't four separate articles 
>but rather a single article consisting of four pages.

I fully understood that, and I explained in talk: that I simply didn't 
think it was a good idea to leave the page like that. Wikipedia is not 
paper and I don't believe that one should have to "turn pages" like that if 
it really is a single article.

My opinion that this is a bad way of organizing the page is just as well 
thought out as your opinion that it isn't. Don't assume that I disagree 
with you simply because you don't think I understand the issue as well as 
you do.

>Wanting you to be aware of the reasons for which a number of users had 
>opposed the kind of division that you were proposing (a New 
>Imperialism-style division/series) isn't rude. Instead, making sure that 
>everyone's on the same page-- what I was attempting to do-- is usually 
>considered helpful.

You yourself later admitted that you came across as "curmudgeonly" in our 
discussion. You also threatened edit wars on two occasions - the first time 
by implication, saying I should avoid "meaningless edit wars" and the 
second time explicitly telling me I would "provoke an edit war" if I went 
ahead. I did _not_ consider your input to be particularly helpful, it came 
across more as an obstinate insistence that you knew best for this page and 
would brook no compromise. In contrast Mav, whom you included in your list 
of people who supported the way the article was split up, seemed willing to 
at least hear me out on my objections (hope you don't mind me invoking your 
name like that, Mav).

I'm not going to discuss the details of the page itself any further here, 
this is the mailing list and not the relevant talk: page. Go there if you 
want to continue discussing it.

>But considering the lynch mob atmosphere of this mailing list, I suppose 
>that writing this article is more evidence in favor of a ban, right?

This isn't about banning you. If I was into that sort of thing I would have 
made more of a ruckus when you moved the in-progress discussion into 
/Archive 2 and protected it, which even then seemed to me like a deliberate 
attempt to quash further debate. I'm simply pointing out that I had a 
similar experience to Geoff's, and came to a similar conclusion; you don't 
seem to work well in the Wikipedia environment collaborating with people 
who disagree with you, you seem to go on the attack instead.